I remember when X-Men 3 came out, there was an article showing the "anti-aging" effects applied to Professor X and Magneto (A quick googling shows this: http://www.fxguide.com/article357.html). I'm not sure why this should make headlines. Yes, special effects can alter what you see on the screen. That's the point of special effects. Computers are powerful things, and they can make the old young, the nervous calm, and the fat skinny. As long as it's not being passed off as a non-fiction documentary, the movie's director can do as he sees fit to actualize his vision.
You know, I'm hardly a free-for-all Free-Marketer, but either we have a global economy or we don't. I love it how all the laws that affect consumers restrict the beejeezus out of them, while laws affecting transnationals allow them unfettered access to any market they choose. Taking the example of music companies, they are allowed to use the law to partition the world into several incompatible markets with artificial restrictions of what music can be sold where, and by whom. They can buy CD cases from Taiwan, have the CD's made in India, and have everything assembled in Mexico, usually duty-free (thanks to "free trade zones" set up in various countries).
If a consumer tries to buy music from other countries through traditional channels, they are usually prevented from doing so by the same companies that tout the wonders of the global economy and the free market. Remember, the free market and the global economy only apply to producers, not consumers. So, iTunes (which is an unfortunate pawn in this shell game) ends up enforcing anti-free market restrictions on product, blocking the consumer from the same freedoms enjoyed by those who produce the product.
I'm not saying the world has to be perfect and we should all get ponies. I'm just saying that if we're going to have a global economy, EVERYONE should be allowed to participate. Otherwise, there is no incentive to NOT get products through non-traditional channels, as the system is rigged against you from the get-go.
American corporations love doing business in countries where labor laws are lax. They do business where labor laws are lax because they can work people there in ways that would be illegal to do so in the United States. The corporations would call this "globalization" and point the great benefits of the "global economy" at work.
American corporations also like to do business in countries where organized dissent to their activities is suppressed by "friendly" governments (friendly to their interests, that is). They do so because organized dissent is legal in the United States and has on more than one occasion 1) aired the corp's dirty laundry, 2) stopped them from performing harmful (but profitable) acts, and 3) called for the corp's to strike a balance between shareholder value and respect for the laws of the country in which they live.
What does all of this have to do with AllOfMP3? Well, American corporations have a long record of doing business (and making bundles of money) by going to places where they aren't restrained by such trite formalities as "laws". American corporations love to extol the virtues of the "global economy", just as long as they're the ones who benefit from it; after all, transnational capital alone should benefit from international business.
But for some reason, the average Joe using the internet to do THE EXACT SAME THING that American corporations have been doing for years is deemed wrong, illegal, unethical, and Lord knows how many other bad things. The average Joe who buys a song from AllOfMP3 is engaging in exactly the same type of transaction that corp's have done for years: gain financial advantage by offshoring their transactions.
Am I oversimplifying? Maybe. But chew on this: Either we have a global market (as we are told that we have as our jobs are outsourced), or we don't. And if we do have a global market, the rules were written long ago by the same people that are trying to stop us from following them.
You know, I just don't get it sometimes. VMWare developing for OSX shouldn't be news, and it shouldn't have taken this long. I don't understand why VMware would have a released Workstation for Linux sooner than for OSX (given the Linux-to-Apple Marketshare conundrum). I guess my question is: Why wasn't this done sooner? I've been running VMWare Workstation on Ubuntu since 5.10, but have been stuck with VPC for Mac forever. I admit I do not have a strong technical grasp of the underlyings of the OSX vs. the Linux kernels, but as both are Unices, shouldn't this kind of development occur in parallel (no pun intended)?
I manage my 40,000+ track collection with Winamp 5.x. iTunes and WMP are absolute dogs, and foobar freaks out when i load all tracks into a playlist for randomizing. Winamp does the following for me:
- allows me to search, sort, and track all my tracks as responsively as can be expected without a full-on database server,
- the MLWWW plugin lets me serve my library via a web interface (which negates the need to set up a LAMP solution to run Andromeda),
- let's me skin, and
- provides me with ALL of the metadata (you know, the ID3 tags you're supposed to keep immaculate) information that i need to adequately manage all tracks.
I've wrestled with other solutions, and short of setting up a database server to do nothing but manage the collection (with 500+ tracks added weekly), Winamp 5.x with the appropriate plugins (and LOTS of ram) provides the best non-server-based solution.
One of the central tenets of Classical (and in this case Friendly) Fascism is the fusion of Corporate and State power for the "common good". When one can no longer tell where the Corporation ends and the State begins (in terms of the power they wield over the citizenry), then you are living in a Fascist state.
Betram Gross had it right 30 years ago. The new Fascism will not involve book burnings, goose stepping, brownshirts, and mass rallies. It will appear in the form of the white man in a suit, PR campaigns, the selling of patriotism and religion, unity against external enemies, and endless war with moving goalposts.
AT&T (or any other telecom that operates under a government franchise) has ABSOLUTELY NO PROBLEM selling out their own customers to the State, because in all reality they are one and the same. Anything else that you think is just effective marketing.
The term "czar" has a special place in the lexicon of politics, both corporate and government. Whenever there's a situation that has no fix (or no fix that can be reasonably attained), the powers-that-be appoint a czar to oversee the situation.
For example, in the US govt there are appointed Drug Czars, Immigration Czars, Energy Czars, Education Czars, and a whole bunch of Czar's who oversee areas of policy that are not really meant to be improved, but still need to be shown as something that is being addressed and taken care of. Appointed Czar's usually have no power, very little budget, and are all show, appointed for the purpose of silencing and placating critics. The Czars don't actually have to "fix" anything, since the areas of policy that they're "put in charge of" are literally beyond fixing. They just have to show up to work and fight the good fight; in this way, the powers-that-be can say that they're doing something about the problem, while not actually having to allocate any significant resources to fix anything.
So, when MySpace (or any other company or organization) appoints a Czar to make everyone safer, take it with a grain of salt. Czar is code word for "fuck off, critics, you're in the way of higher profit and/or control over our subjects".
Look, the way I see it, it's about balance. There are currently great forces amassing against Open/Free ways of doing things. The enemies of "freedom" (to borrow a term from W) have no problems buying politicians and laws to make their way of doing business the only way to do business. Closed/DRM advocates will and are currently using the full force of the legal system to do away with anything they perceive as competition and a threat to their "right" to vacuum up profits and exert total and complete control.
This is why GPL3 is important. It provides a counter-balance to the what's coming (if it's not already here). We can all bitch and moan about how our freedom to tinker/code/etc is being infringed on ever day by soul-less corporation, but then get all feaked out when we come up with a license to combat those infringements.
The other side pushes very, very hard. GPL3 pushes back. The other side does not play nice with Open philosophy. GPL3 helps us gain traction against this. If you are not thinking in terms of "them and us", GPL3 does look like it's imposing an ethical and moral code. But, given what we're up against, that's OK by me.
There needs to be balance. Our side doesn't have an army of lawyers, lobbyists, and MBA's. ALl we have is our philosophy, our ideal, and respect for the efforts of the community.
I was a member of a touring rock band for 3 years. We played dives, we played arenas, we played everything in between. We had no record contract, then we had one, then we didn't. All through that crazy ride, we never lost money. We made money on everything we did. We made sure that gigs paid for our food, hotel, gas money, manager, and merch costs. We made sure that we had money left over to pay all the bills back home when we spent months on the road and overseas. At first, we lost money, because we didn't understand the game; we were happy to just be playing out in front of a crowd. Then we got wise to the game.
All band members shared one house, along with our manager. We were like a commune; it's the way it had to be if we were to make money. We used our managers' industry contacts to get the marketing and publicity done at ridiculously low rates. We used the guitarists' dad's contacts to secure a competent entertainment attorney pro bono. Every item we sold was profitable. Every CD, t-shirt, autograph, and assorted swag was profit.
I know what I'm talking about because I did it for a living. If there are professional touring musicians who can't make money from the road, then I'm not sure that they understand the business dynamics of professional live music. Sure, we didn't get rich, but we made a living.
When you give money to live musicians, its up to them to have the business side of their house in order so every dollar they recieve is not a dollar going to service a debt. We met a LOT of other acts on the road that had no food, no hotel to stay in, and were living day to day...I guess just like there's people that live paycheck to paycheck, and there's people that know how to manage money. We didn't become rich or famous, but we made money as professional musicians playing original rock music on the road.
Too many acts think that the only way to make money is "being signed" and that's what constitutes "making it". If those acts lose money, so be it. I just know what it's like to do it right and stay on top financially. So yea, we used shows to make money, not to promote our music. Promotion was a profit center for us.
If an act is playing in an arena, i'm not interested in going to the show. The seats are always terrible, the acoustics are atrocious, and there's no real connection to the artist. Consequently, I try to avoid albums of bands that are big enough to play arenas. I have a LOT of indie and eletronic albums, acts that by nature, play clubs and small theatres.
Acts playing in small venues, I have found, are very approachable, and the personnel that the band puts out in the merch booth is usually touring with the act. This means that in dealing with the merch people, you're one step from the artist. So when I buy a CD or a t-shirt or other swag from their merch booth, it's as good as handing over crisp bills to the act themselves.
I've even done a step further. About two months ago, one of my favorite indie acts came down to play a small theatre across the street from a local university. I had downloaded their album from allofmp3.com and had been enjoying their tunes. When I went to the show, i bought a copy of their CD ($6 at the show compared to $15 at the store, and all the money goes directly to the band), a t-shirt ($12, with $8 of that going directly to the band), and what I call a "piracy fee" of $5 directly to the guitarist. When i was talking to the guitarist, I explained to him my position on downloading albums, and why I was giving him this $5, and he was blown away at the integrity I showed. He brought me back to meet the rest of the band and, after he explained to everyone who I was and what I was doing, we all partied and drank the night away. It was really quite cool, on many levels.
Point is, if you're going to a Shakira or Bruce Springsteen or $Arena_Act show, you won't have the same ability to put your money where your mouth is. So, yes, you kinda do have to write them a check personally if you want to give money directly to artists. But if there's a will, there's a way.
You know, all this talk of voting with your wallet is completely true. I was once a very large consumer of music; my CD collection stands at over 2000 legitimate, store-bought discs. But ever since the RIAA started taking a very aggressive, anti-consumer stance with their products, I have done a few things:
1) I stopped buying new music discs from stores. 2) I increased my used CD purchases. 3) I increased my concert attendance to give my money directly to artists. 4) I started downloading music.
What does all of this have to do with allofmp3.com? In the last 3 months, I've spent over $250 of my money with them. They provide exactly the kind of service that I would expect from an online music retailer: large selection, choice of format, reasonable pricing. It has totally eliminated numbers 1, 2, and 4 from the above list. It's the perfect solution (although I still buy used CD's when I can't find them on allofmp3).
People are bitching that allofmp3 is:
A) Unethical because the artists don't get paid: Well, they don't get paid when I go down to mall to buy a CD, and they don't get paid when I buy a used CD. Speaking as someone who at one time was under a major-label contract, artists don't get paid from record sales, unless they're already huge.
B) Run by the russian Mafia: the record industry here is run by the mafia, or at least run LIKE the mafia. No sympathy here; at least if allofmp3 is run by the mafia, they don't pretend otherwise. Here, our record labels act like they exist to serve the artist...what a load!
Look, the bottom line is that allofmp3 has it right. LARGE SELECTION, FAIR PRICES, CHOICE OF FORMAT, and EASE OF USE. I know they're doing it right, because I'm finally buying huge amounts of music again. It's everything a music store should be. And its far out of the reach of US law, thank God!
Kinda offtopic, but I have to throw this one out there, as it has direct bearing on the parent:
"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power" - Benito Mussolini (Italian dictator, 1883-1945)
No one wants to say it, since it lends itself to hysteria, but from a political science standpoint, the U.S.A. has moved away from a capitalist democratic republic to a weird blend of friendly fascism and free-market capitalist democracy.
What the hell IS the cia doing with an "investment arm"? Seriously, they could be investing in magic rainbow ponies, and it wouldn't matter because a spy agency should not be investing, period!
Funny, I always thought that the point of lititation was to uncover the truth and gain justice. (sigh) I guess it's back to La-La Land for me, where Law isn't just another business weapon.
I, too have an abnormally large music collection (155GB and counting), as well as every photo and video shot in the last 4 years, plus app archives and general infocruft. Granted, i'm not joe sixpack, but 500gb drives are quite welcome in my household!
BTW, I tried to find your contact info, Angle, to see if i have any music that you'd need, but i found no way to contact you!
You paint a picture of an evil corporate-controlled society with black helicopters and spotlights swarming in the night to take away your cherished freedoms. But DRM like iTunes' is the most liberal there is, and you can easily use its loopholes for things like infinite CD burning (just recreate the playlist).
You might have said that sarcastically, but a lot of people think this way. This kind of worldview emerges if you follow the current trend of relentless corporate-goverment culture restrictions policies to their logical conclusion.
Separately, I offer two analogies based on the last sentence in your comment:
He's a guy whose making it harder to get the record labels to embrace online downloading as their business model.
1) The fact that record labels will not consider selling music online without onerous restrictions underscores Jons point.
2) Saying that iTMS has the least restrictive DRM scheme is a lot like the difference between the Minimum Security wing of a prison (iTMS), and the Maximum Security wing of a prison (the goal of the labels); in the end, you're still in prison.
So let me get this straight: it's wrong for me to buy music from Russia where I can get it more cheaply, because I'd be undercutting the honest American business man?
Ok, so it's wrong when i excercise my ability to purchase goods on the open global market, thus participating in the globalization of the "music commodity", but it's perfectly ok when those same mechanisms are used to move $MY_JOB overseas so that "The Man" can increase his profit margin and get that seventh Bentley.
With every passing day, I see more examples of Copyright Law and Treaties being used not to temprorarily protect the creator of a work (as is the spirit of copyright), but to create and enforce an incredibly restrictive regime of one sided IP monopolies. When you can buy the Law, the immoral can become legal, and the Right Thing(tm) can become outlawed.
Either we have a global market for goods and services, or we don't. They can't have it both ways.
...but you cannot have a religious fundamentalist oil baron as president and expect him to respect pure science. I would take it a step further and say that you cannot have a truly religious person be impartial, unbiased, and untainted when making any type of policy-wide science-related decision. It's oil and water; religion and science just don't gel. Oh yeah, people say then can and do, but those people are usually of the religiously inclined, who are trying to stay true to their belief system without looking like a progress-hating ignoramous.
Slightly off-topic but relevant, I was having this discussion with a colleague. I posited that in a perfect political system, a politician would not be allowed to run for president; instead, we should only nominate and elect outgoing, well-versed, and apolitical scholars, with advanced degrees in areas pertinent to running a nation, such as economics, sociology, or whatnot. My colleagues rebuttal was that such people would not want the type of lifestyle that comes along with being El Presidente, thus would never even enter themselves in the running. Therefore, we continue to elect former actors, pure politicians, and shady businessmen to our highest office, thus perpetuating our current kakistocracy.
My memory is a bit sketchy, but haven't people been saying for years that the shuttles in the shuttle program were well past their intended life cycle? Don't we remember hearing about NASA engineers that had to get shuttle parts off of eBay and other unorthodox methods, because the parts were so old and discontinued? Weren't these insanely complex machines built by the lowest bidder?
I was shocked in '86 when we lost the Challenger. But to even feign shock at today's events is to pretend that those shuttles were brand spanking new, that NASA is continously underfunded and overmandated, etc... I bet they're going to blame the engineers, NASA itself, or some other baloney, instead of placing the blame sqaurely on the shoulders of the congressmen who, year after year, denied additional R&D funding and blocked any attempts to replace the aging fleet b/c of the business interests of some of his "constituents"
Sad? Yes. Tragic, actually. Unexpected? We saw this coming years away.
...for import dvd's to have engrish subtitles. Remember, an english movie having english subtitles is no different than american-made, MPAA sanctioned product having english as one of the closed captioned options.
I just got the Schindler's List DVD (a movie which is not out on DVD officially) from a seller in Ebay. The subtitles are english, thai, cantonese, japanese, and something else. Sometimes, when i didn't understand the dialogue, I turned on the subtitles to read what the character said. The subtitles were in Engrish.
The way i figure it, the makers of the dvd transalted the english dialogue into their native tongue, then translated their native tongue back to engrish. Many times in this dvd, what the subtitle says is NOT what the character is saying.
A couple of years ago, I was in a band with commercial promise. We found a group of investors, comprised of money men, attorneys and others with industry contacts, to back us financially. We understood from the beginning that playing in a garage until discovered only worked in "That Thing You Do". We understood that incessant touring with no radio play only works for a very minimal amount of bands. We understood that marketing and promotion were more important than the songs themselves (at least in the are of financial success).
We took their money and our purposely catchy "written for radio" songs to the Hit Factory in Miami (an uber-studio, with clients like Creed, Michael Jackson, Lenny Kravitz, etc) and recorded alternative rock Radio Hits (tm) with the best producer we could afford. We came out with a CD that sounded so good, I'm still glad to have myname associated with it.
Since we were not signed to a label, we had no "in" with the local "independent promoter", who "owned" the rock radio market in our area. Clear Channel is the monopoly in our market, and will play the songs that the "Indie" pays them to promote, at a price that is unfair to non-megacorps. The "Locals Only" show was on only on Sunday nights at midnight (how typical). There was no way for us to get on the radio.
Then, we had the brilliant idea of buying Advertising time (as in commercials) on the station and playing our songs. One of the investors on our team had an "in" with the marketing company that booked most of the time for ads on the 3 rock stations in the market. We recieved very favorable rates per thirty seconds, and it actually would turn out cheaper than paying the "indie", if we had access to him.
Long story short, after 6 days of strong ad-time and experiencing a jump in concert atttendance and merch sales, our ads were pulled (while still having 8 days left on the current ad contract). It turns out that the Indie was receiving complaints from a higher-up and threatened to drop that particular station from his list (which would make the station lose access to the latest hits. Remember that hits=ears=money). We were outraged. We couldn't even bypass the payola system in place, even though we were still paying to get heard on the radio.
The moral of this story is that Russ Feingold and anyone else with the balls to stand against corporate radio money needs all the support he can get. Even when you have the backing to do it yourself, you're still not a Label-Slave(tm). You are not to be considered for airplay.
Slashdot Mirror
I remember when X-Men 3 came out, there was an article showing the "anti-aging" effects applied to Professor X and Magneto (A quick googling shows this: http://www.fxguide.com/article357.html). I'm not sure why this should make headlines. Yes, special effects can alter what you see on the screen. That's the point of special effects. Computers are powerful things, and they can make the old young, the nervous calm, and the fat skinny. As long as it's not being passed off as a non-fiction documentary, the movie's director can do as he sees fit to actualize his vision.
You know, I'm hardly a free-for-all Free-Marketer, but either we have a global economy or we don't. I love it how all the laws that affect consumers restrict the beejeezus out of them, while laws affecting transnationals allow them unfettered access to any market they choose. Taking the example of music companies, they are allowed to use the law to partition the world into several incompatible markets with artificial restrictions of what music can be sold where, and by whom. They can buy CD cases from Taiwan, have the CD's made in India, and have everything assembled in Mexico, usually duty-free (thanks to "free trade zones" set up in various countries).
If a consumer tries to buy music from other countries through traditional channels, they are usually prevented from doing so by the same companies that tout the wonders of the global economy and the free market. Remember, the free market and the global economy only apply to producers, not consumers. So, iTunes (which is an unfortunate pawn in this shell game) ends up enforcing anti-free market restrictions on product, blocking the consumer from the same freedoms enjoyed by those who produce the product.
I'm not saying the world has to be perfect and we should all get ponies. I'm just saying that if we're going to have a global economy, EVERYONE should be allowed to participate. Otherwise, there is no incentive to NOT get products through non-traditional channels, as the system is rigged against you from the get-go.
American corporations love doing business in countries where labor laws are lax. They do business where labor laws are lax because they can work people there in ways that would be illegal to do so in the United States. The corporations would call this "globalization" and point the great benefits of the "global economy" at work.
American corporations also like to do business in countries where organized dissent to their activities is suppressed by "friendly" governments (friendly to their interests, that is). They do so because organized dissent is legal in the United States and has on more than one occasion 1) aired the corp's dirty laundry, 2) stopped them from performing harmful (but profitable) acts, and 3) called for the corp's to strike a balance between shareholder value and respect for the laws of the country in which they live.
What does all of this have to do with AllOfMP3? Well, American corporations have a long record of doing business (and making bundles of money) by going to places where they aren't restrained by such trite formalities as "laws". American corporations love to extol the virtues of the "global economy", just as long as they're the ones who benefit from it; after all, transnational capital alone should benefit from international business.
But for some reason, the average Joe using the internet to do THE EXACT SAME THING that American corporations have been doing for years is deemed wrong, illegal, unethical, and Lord knows how many other bad things. The average Joe who buys a song from AllOfMP3 is engaging in exactly the same type of transaction that corp's have done for years: gain financial advantage by offshoring their transactions.
Am I oversimplifying? Maybe. But chew on this: Either we have a global market (as we are told that we have as our jobs are outsourced), or we don't. And if we do have a global market, the rules were written long ago by the same people that are trying to stop us from following them.
Somewhere in this story is a joke about Man Tools and Menstruation, but I just refuse to go there on principle.
You know, I just don't get it sometimes. VMWare developing for OSX shouldn't be news, and it shouldn't have taken this long. I don't understand why VMware would have a released Workstation for Linux sooner than for OSX (given the Linux-to-Apple Marketshare conundrum). I guess my question is: Why wasn't this done sooner? I've been running VMWare Workstation on Ubuntu since 5.10, but have been stuck with VPC for Mac forever. I admit I do not have a strong technical grasp of the underlyings of the OSX vs. the Linux kernels, but as both are Unices, shouldn't this kind of development occur in parallel (no pun intended)?
I manage my 40,000+ track collection with Winamp 5.x. iTunes and WMP are absolute dogs, and foobar freaks out when i load all tracks into a playlist for randomizing. Winamp does the following for me:
- allows me to search, sort, and track all my tracks as responsively as can be expected without a full-on database server,
- the MLWWW plugin lets me serve my library via a web interface (which negates the need to set up a LAMP solution to run Andromeda),
- let's me skin, and
- provides me with ALL of the metadata (you know, the ID3 tags you're supposed to keep immaculate) information that i need to adequately manage all tracks.
I've wrestled with other solutions, and short of setting up a database server to do nothing but manage the collection (with 500+ tracks added weekly), Winamp 5.x with the appropriate plugins (and LOTS of ram) provides the best non-server-based solution.
One of the central tenets of Classical (and in this case Friendly) Fascism is the fusion of Corporate and State power for the "common good". When one can no longer tell where the Corporation ends and the State begins (in terms of the power they wield over the citizenry), then you are living in a Fascist state.
Betram Gross had it right 30 years ago. The new Fascism will not involve book burnings, goose stepping, brownshirts, and mass rallies. It will appear in the form of the white man in a suit, PR campaigns, the selling of patriotism and religion, unity against external enemies, and endless war with moving goalposts.
AT&T (or any other telecom that operates under a government franchise) has ABSOLUTELY NO PROBLEM selling out their own customers to the State, because in all reality they are one and the same. Anything else that you think is just effective marketing.
The term "czar" has a special place in the lexicon of politics, both corporate and government. Whenever there's a situation that has no fix (or no fix that can be reasonably attained), the powers-that-be appoint a czar to oversee the situation.
For example, in the US govt there are appointed Drug Czars, Immigration Czars, Energy Czars, Education Czars, and a whole bunch of Czar's who oversee areas of policy that are not really meant to be improved, but still need to be shown as something that is being addressed and taken care of. Appointed Czar's usually have no power, very little budget, and are all show, appointed for the purpose of silencing and placating critics. The Czars don't actually have to "fix" anything, since the areas of policy that they're "put in charge of" are literally beyond fixing. They just have to show up to work and fight the good fight; in this way, the powers-that-be can say that they're doing something about the problem, while not actually having to allocate any significant resources to fix anything.
So, when MySpace (or any other company or organization) appoints a Czar to make everyone safer, take it with a grain of salt. Czar is code word for "fuck off, critics, you're in the way of higher profit and/or control over our subjects".
Just my $0.02
Look, the way I see it, it's about balance. There are currently great forces amassing against Open/Free ways of doing things. The enemies of "freedom" (to borrow a term from W) have no problems buying politicians and laws to make their way of doing business the only way to do business. Closed/DRM advocates will and are currently using the full force of the legal system to do away with anything they perceive as competition and a threat to their "right" to vacuum up profits and exert total and complete control.
This is why GPL3 is important. It provides a counter-balance to the what's coming (if it's not already here). We can all bitch and moan about how our freedom to tinker/code/etc is being infringed on ever day by soul-less corporation, but then get all feaked out when we come up with a license to combat those infringements.
The other side pushes very, very hard. GPL3 pushes back. The other side does not play nice with Open philosophy. GPL3 helps us gain traction against this. If you are not thinking in terms of "them and us", GPL3 does look like it's imposing an ethical and moral code. But, given what we're up against, that's OK by me.
There needs to be balance. Our side doesn't have an army of lawyers, lobbyists, and MBA's. ALl we have is our philosophy, our ideal, and respect for the efforts of the community.
I was a member of a touring rock band for 3 years. We played dives, we played arenas, we played everything in between. We had no record contract, then we had one, then we didn't. All through that crazy ride, we never lost money. We made money on everything we did. We made sure that gigs paid for our food, hotel, gas money, manager, and merch costs. We made sure that we had money left over to pay all the bills back home when we spent months on the road and overseas. At first, we lost money, because we didn't understand the game; we were happy to just be playing out in front of a crowd. Then we got wise to the game.
All band members shared one house, along with our manager. We were like a commune; it's the way it had to be if we were to make money. We used our managers' industry contacts to get the marketing and publicity done at ridiculously low rates. We used the guitarists' dad's contacts to secure a competent entertainment attorney pro bono. Every item we sold was profitable. Every CD, t-shirt, autograph, and assorted swag was profit.
I know what I'm talking about because I did it for a living. If there are professional touring musicians who can't make money from the road, then I'm not sure that they understand the business dynamics of professional live music. Sure, we didn't get rich, but we made a living.
When you give money to live musicians, its up to them to have the business side of their house in order so every dollar they recieve is not a dollar going to service a debt. We met a LOT of other acts on the road that had no food, no hotel to stay in, and were living day to day...I guess just like there's people that live paycheck to paycheck, and there's people that know how to manage money. We didn't become rich or famous, but we made money as professional musicians playing original rock music on the road.
Too many acts think that the only way to make money is "being signed" and that's what constitutes "making it". If those acts lose money, so be it. I just know what it's like to do it right and stay on top financially. So yea, we used shows to make money, not to promote our music. Promotion was a profit center for us.
Not so. Let me give you an example.
If an act is playing in an arena, i'm not interested in going to the show. The seats are always terrible, the acoustics are atrocious, and there's no real connection to the artist. Consequently, I try to avoid albums of bands that are big enough to play arenas. I have a LOT of indie and eletronic albums, acts that by nature, play clubs and small theatres.
Acts playing in small venues, I have found, are very approachable, and the personnel that the band puts out in the merch booth is usually touring with the act. This means that in dealing with the merch people, you're one step from the artist. So when I buy a CD or a t-shirt or other swag from their merch booth, it's as good as handing over crisp bills to the act themselves.
I've even done a step further. About two months ago, one of my favorite indie acts came down to play a small theatre across the street from a local university. I had downloaded their album from allofmp3.com and had been enjoying their tunes. When I went to the show, i bought a copy of their CD ($6 at the show compared to $15 at the store, and all the money goes directly to the band), a t-shirt ($12, with $8 of that going directly to the band), and what I call a "piracy fee" of $5 directly to the guitarist. When i was talking to the guitarist, I explained to him my position on downloading albums, and why I was giving him this $5, and he was blown away at the integrity I showed. He brought me back to meet the rest of the band and, after he explained to everyone who I was and what I was doing, we all partied and drank the night away. It was really quite cool, on many levels.
Point is, if you're going to a Shakira or Bruce Springsteen or $Arena_Act show, you won't have the same ability to put your money where your mouth is. So, yes, you kinda do have to write them a check personally if you want to give money directly to artists. But if there's a will, there's a way.
You know, all this talk of voting with your wallet is completely true. I was once a very large consumer of music; my CD collection stands at over 2000 legitimate, store-bought discs. But ever since the RIAA started taking a very aggressive, anti-consumer stance with their products, I have done a few things:
1) I stopped buying new music discs from stores.
2) I increased my used CD purchases.
3) I increased my concert attendance to give my money directly to artists.
4) I started downloading music.
What does all of this have to do with allofmp3.com? In the last 3 months, I've spent over $250 of my money with them. They provide exactly the kind of service that I would expect from an online music retailer: large selection, choice of format, reasonable pricing. It has totally eliminated numbers 1, 2, and 4 from the above list. It's the perfect solution (although I still buy used CD's when I can't find them on allofmp3).
People are bitching that allofmp3 is:
A) Unethical because the artists don't get paid: Well, they don't get paid when I go down to mall to buy a CD, and they don't get paid when I buy a used CD. Speaking as someone who at one time was under a major-label contract, artists don't get paid from record sales, unless they're already huge.
B) Run by the russian Mafia: the record industry here is run by the mafia, or at least run LIKE the mafia. No sympathy here; at least if allofmp3 is run by the mafia, they don't pretend otherwise. Here, our record labels act like they exist to serve the artist...what a load!
Look, the bottom line is that allofmp3 has it right. LARGE SELECTION, FAIR PRICES, CHOICE OF FORMAT, and EASE OF USE. I know they're doing it right, because I'm finally buying huge amounts of music again. It's everything a music store should be. And its far out of the reach of US law, thank God!
Kinda offtopic, but I have to throw this one out there, as it has direct bearing on the parent:
"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power" - Benito Mussolini (Italian dictator, 1883-1945)
No one wants to say it, since it lends itself to hysteria, but from a political science standpoint, the U.S.A. has moved away from a capitalist democratic republic to a weird blend of friendly fascism and free-market capitalist democracy.
What the hell IS the cia doing with an "investment arm"? Seriously, they could be investing in magic rainbow ponies, and it wouldn't matter because a spy agency should not be investing, period!
After reading this quote
Litigation is always a cost-benefit analysis.
Funny, I always thought that the point of lititation was to uncover the truth and gain justice. (sigh) I guess it's back to La-La Land for me, where Law isn't just another business weapon.
I, too have an abnormally large music collection (155GB and counting), as well as every photo and video shot in the last 4 years, plus app archives and general infocruft. Granted, i'm not joe sixpack, but 500gb drives are quite welcome in my household!
BTW, I tried to find your contact info, Angle, to see if i have any music that you'd need, but i found no way to contact you!
Hmm...USA LIBERTY.....
Using
Simplified
Acronyms to
Lead
Idiots into
Believing that
Enslaving prior
offendeRs
proTects the
Youth
You might have said that sarcastically, but a lot of people think this way. This kind of worldview emerges if you follow the current trend of relentless corporate-goverment culture restrictions policies to their logical conclusion.
Separately, I offer two analogies based on the last sentence in your comment:
1) The fact that record labels will not consider selling music online without onerous restrictions underscores Jons point.
2) Saying that iTMS has the least restrictive DRM scheme is a lot like the difference between the Minimum Security wing of a prison (iTMS), and the Maximum Security wing of a prison (the goal of the labels); in the end, you're still in prison.
So let me get this straight: it's wrong for me to buy music from Russia where I can get it more cheaply, because I'd be undercutting the honest American business man?
Ok, so it's wrong when i excercise my ability to purchase goods on the open global market, thus participating in the globalization of the "music commodity", but it's perfectly ok when those same mechanisms are used to move $MY_JOB overseas so that "The Man" can increase his profit margin and get that seventh Bentley.
With every passing day, I see more examples of Copyright Law and Treaties being used not to temprorarily protect the creator of a work (as is the spirit of copyright), but to create and enforce an incredibly restrictive regime of one sided IP monopolies. When you can buy the Law, the immoral can become legal, and the Right Thing(tm) can become outlawed.
Either we have a global market for goods and services, or we don't. They can't have it both ways.
...but you cannot have a religious fundamentalist oil baron as president and expect him to respect pure science. I would take it a step further and say that you cannot have a truly religious person be impartial, unbiased, and untainted when making any type of policy-wide science-related decision. It's oil and water; religion and science just don't gel. Oh yeah, people say then can and do, but those people are usually of the religiously inclined, who are trying to stay true to their belief system without looking like a progress-hating ignoramous.
Slightly off-topic but relevant, I was having this discussion with a colleague. I posited that in a perfect political system, a politician would not be allowed to run for president; instead, we should only nominate and elect outgoing, well-versed, and apolitical scholars, with advanced degrees in areas pertinent to running a nation, such as economics, sociology, or whatnot. My colleagues rebuttal was that such people would not want the type of lifestyle that comes along with being El Presidente, thus would never even enter themselves in the running. Therefore, we continue to elect former actors, pure politicians, and shady businessmen to our highest office, thus perpetuating our current kakistocracy.
Suckage begets suckage.
Word of Mouth Ruled Illegal - Film at 11
Except that the business model for Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, etc...is the same as the disposable razor companies:
1) Sell hardware at or below cost
2) Make it all back on software sales
3) Profit!!
Only good things can come from a tech visionary who purchases Old World infrastructure and is willing to run fiber to them.
My memory is a bit sketchy, but haven't people been saying for years that the shuttles in the shuttle program were well past their intended life cycle? Don't we remember hearing about NASA engineers that had to get shuttle parts off of eBay and other unorthodox methods, because the parts were so old and discontinued? Weren't these insanely complex machines built by the lowest bidder?
I was shocked in '86 when we lost the Challenger. But to even feign shock at today's events is to pretend that those shuttles were brand spanking new, that NASA is continously underfunded and overmandated, etc... I bet they're going to blame the engineers, NASA itself, or some other baloney, instead of placing the blame sqaurely on the shoulders of the congressmen who, year after year, denied additional R&D funding and blocked any attempts to replace the aging fleet b/c of the business interests of some of his "constituents"Sad? Yes. Tragic, actually. Unexpected? We saw this coming years away.
I just got the Schindler's List DVD (a movie which is not out on DVD officially) from a seller in Ebay. The subtitles are english, thai, cantonese, japanese, and something else. Sometimes, when i didn't understand the dialogue, I turned on the subtitles to read what the character said. The subtitles were in Engrish.
The way i figure it, the makers of the dvd transalted the english dialogue into their native tongue, then translated their native tongue back to engrish. Many times in this dvd, what the subtitle says is NOT what the character is saying.
Just my $0.02.
A couple of years ago, I was in a band with commercial promise. We found a group of investors, comprised of money men, attorneys and others with industry contacts, to back us financially. We understood from the beginning that playing in a garage until discovered only worked in "That Thing You Do". We understood that incessant touring with no radio play only works for a very minimal amount of bands. We understood that marketing and promotion were more important than the songs themselves (at least in the are of financial success).
We took their money and our purposely catchy "written for radio" songs to the Hit Factory in Miami (an uber-studio, with clients like Creed, Michael Jackson, Lenny Kravitz, etc) and recorded alternative rock Radio Hits (tm) with the best producer we could afford. We came out with a CD that sounded so good, I'm still glad to have myname associated with it.
Since we were not signed to a label, we had no "in" with the local "independent promoter", who "owned" the rock radio market in our area. Clear Channel is the monopoly in our market, and will play the songs that the "Indie" pays them to promote, at a price that is unfair to non-megacorps. The "Locals Only" show was on only on Sunday nights at midnight (how typical). There was no way for us to get on the radio.
Then, we had the brilliant idea of buying Advertising time (as in commercials) on the station and playing our songs. One of the investors on our team had an "in" with the marketing company that booked most of the time for ads on the 3 rock stations in the market. We recieved very favorable rates per thirty seconds, and it actually would turn out cheaper than paying the "indie", if we had access to him.
Long story short, after 6 days of strong ad-time and experiencing a jump in concert atttendance and merch sales, our ads were pulled (while still having 8 days left on the current ad contract). It turns out that the Indie was receiving complaints from a higher-up and threatened to drop that particular station from his list (which would make the station lose access to the latest hits. Remember that hits=ears=money). We were outraged. We couldn't even bypass the payola system in place, even though we were still paying to get heard on the radio.
The moral of this story is that Russ Feingold and anyone else with the balls to stand against corporate radio money needs all the support he can get. Even when you have the backing to do it yourself, you're still not a Label-Slave(tm). You are not to be considered for airplay.